DualBoot XP/Vista with Vista installed first ??

[g8ina]

Yes, it's that old chestnut...

PC of a friend has Vista pre-installed and needs to have XP available for some older S/W she MUST be able to run (Dragon Naturally Speaking, Autocad, Omnipage).

I've seen one or two tutorials, but they do want to make it tricky...

Anyone got a simple way of installing XP on a Vista PC and being able to dual boot successfully ?

TIA

[jackvdbuk]

the most easiest way is a little quality piece of software called EASYBCD!!

makes it so easy anyone can possibly do it

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

[Fabula]

Easybcd sounds interesting.
Other than that, I would have suggested a convoluted method of making partitions, installing, rearranging etc.

[iamtheoneneo]

you can make partitions and install xp first . or if the mobo supports it and you have 2 hdd then you can install xp on one drive and vista on another (taking the hdd out after each install) then plonk them both in and use the mobos features to select the boot. thats what i have and works a treat - and also avoids vista dodgy boot loader when it goes wrong.

[0iD]

A different tack is taken here: http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vi...ter-vista.html

[master811]

Yep, using either EasyBCD or Vista Boot Pro (both do more or less the same thing), you can just install XP on another partition, then use the mentioned progs to reinstall the Vista boot manager from XP so that you can then simply boot to both.

You'll need to just copy,
boot.ini
ntldr
ntdetect
from the Vista to the XP partition for it to work (though you'll have to unhide protected OS files to see them))

[g8ina]

Thanks guys,

That last post was the one that made the difference